Street gangs in Scotland 'increasingly influenced by London’s drill music culture'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Street gangs in Scotland are being increasingly influenced by London’s drill music culture, according to a former hoodlum.Clad in an all-black “uniform” of hoodies and balaclavas, gang members call themselves “roadmen” and associate the music’s dark lyrics with glamour.The development is revealed in Street Gangs, a three-part documentary hosted by author and ex-gang member Graeme Armstrong.

The author, 32, who wrote about his own experiences growing up in gangs in Airdrie, in his acclaimed novel, The Young Team, said his recent work in communities and in schools suggested that gangs were on the increase in Scotland.In the series he travels to different parts of Scotland, and speaks with street gangs who reveal the growing influence of drill music, a sub genre of hip hop often linked to gang lifestyle.He said: “The message in drill music isn’t really social realism, it’s more like a manual to murder.“If you look at the gang violence in London, in 2018-19 it started hitting the headlines, stabbings everywhere – stab city and all of that.

There were 178 murders that year and 70 per cent of them were young guys aged 18-24, so that paints a really serious picture of territorial gang violence with knives.“That’s what Scotland always had, so the drill thing, it is a change of uniform.

It is there but it’s feeding into our existing gangs.”In Prestonpans, near Edinburgh, Armstrong meets with three youths in a tunnel used for gang fights.